Pulse pressure as determinant of endothelial dysfunction in never treated hypertensive patients

We tested whether pulse pressure (PP) is associated to endothelial function in 262 previously never-treated hypertensives. All patients underwent measurement of clinic and ambulatory blood pressure (BP), endothelium-dependent and -independent vasodilation by intra-arterial infusion of increasing doses of acetylcholine (ACh) and sodium nitroprusside. Our data demonstrate an inverse significant correlation between ACh-stimulated forearm blood flow (FBF) and monitored PP, accounting for 33.6% of the variation. Notably, ACh-stimulated FBF decreases by 8.7% for each mm Hg increase in monitored PP.